Yet the 22-year-old Carp walked away from the wreck with nothing more than a good excuse to be late for his first spring training with the Mariners.

"The grace of God right there," he said, scoffing at the absurdity of not even having a scratch on his 6-foot-2, 215-pound frame.

Three weeks later, the former New York Mets prospect is crashing Seattle's roster plans. The first baseman with an attack mentality at the plate has been the surprise of training camp.

"He seemed to be awfully lucky to come out of that with no problems," Mariners manager Don Wakamatsu said Monday with Carp boasting an early spring batting average of .444.

The Mariners insisted on getting Carp, who spent last season at Double-A Binghamton, from the Mets in a three-team, 12-player trade in December that sent former All-Star closer J.J. Putz to New York. Seattle saw Carp as a future regular at first base, perhaps as soon as 2010.

Now Carp is opening eyes as a possible contributor this season, part of the Mariners' never-ending quest for left-handed hitting.

"We'll continue to let it play out, but I've been impressed with him," said Wakamatsu, a rookie manager with an entirely new coaching staff. "I think the biggest thing for us as a staff in camp is to find some trust in players, if we have to call on them."

Carp is earning trust with laser-like drives.

"I always like to hit, and hit the ball far," said Carp. "I just want to basically destroy the baseball. That's the plan up there."

It's working. He had five RBIs in the Mariners' first five games.

"The biggest thing we see right now is his professionalism in his at-bats," Wakamatsu said, "the way he just attacks the ball, his aggressiveness and his demeanor at the plate."

Yes, any guy who can slam a car into a wall, go home, fix up the family's old pickup truck to continue his drive and then walk into camp the next day to begin slamming fastballs all over the desert deserves at least a look.

"I got out here and said, 'OK, great. What a great first impression. Got out here late by a day and a half,"' Carp said before boarding the bus for a road game. He was 0-for-1 Monday as Seattle beat the Chicago White Sox 5-3.

Carp had delayed leaving for spring training from his home in Lakewood, Calif., for two days last month because of heavy rains, then left at 4 a.m. the morning of the day he was supposed to arrive in camp.

Fifteen minutes later a downpour began and a passing car splashed his on the Route 91 freeway in Anaheim. He said he was traveling at 55 mph.

"I was on cruise control. That's how I know I was driving 55," he said, smiling at the doubt a 22-year-old in a 690-horsepower Mustang could go that slowly.

The car spun twice around, then slammed into a cement divider in the median. Carp then drove the wrong way for about 100 yards against oncoming traffic to get out of everyone's way - "a little stunt driving," he said with a chuckle.

The car's air bags never deployed, a malfunction he still wonders about.

Was he shaken up?

"Uh, I was pretty upset about the car," Carp said, "and nobody stopped, which is bull. There had to be at least 20 or 30 cars that passed me."

Carp called the highway patrol, sat in his wrecked car to stay dry until an officer arrived, then called his parents and asked for a ride home.

"My dad was just getting up for work, so that call was very frightening for him, I assume," he deadpanned.

Shortly after the accident he called his agent for his new team's phone number, then phoned Mariners general manager Jack Zduriencik and braced for a reprimand about being late to camp.

Zduriencik made sure Carp was OK and that no one else was involved, then told Carp to wait a day before coming to camp.

"He took it better that I thought he was going to," said Carp.